2 Questions about Variables and formatting them

[Shellslark]

I'm a Flare newbie that's working on a long-standing doc set that was imported from FrameMaker. This is my first Flare project and I'm working as a free-lancer.

I have two questions about variables:

1) How do I apply different styles to the variable text so that it matches the text on the rest of the line? Several variables are so common that they need to be formatted to match the body text, the heading text, menu item text, etc. Is there a trick to fixing this quickly or do I need to define different variable styles for the different style situations and manually re-insert the corrected variable format in each instance?

2) I have 2 variables that are so ubiquitous that I'd like to convert them back to plain text. The terminology is unlikely to change in the future. Is there a way to find and replace those variables automatically?

Thanks for your expertise!

[sfoley]

1) How do I apply different styles to the variable text so that it matches the text on the rest of the line? Several variables are so common that they need to be formatted to match the body text, the heading text, menu item text, etc. Is there a trick to fixing this quickly or do I need to define different variable styles for the different style situations and manually re-insert the corrected variable format in each instance?

Variables automatically inherit the styles of their parent element. If you add a variable to a heading or paragraph, it will look like the surrounding text. If your project doesn't look that way--you imported your content, perhaps?--you may need to examine the code in your topics to make sure that extra formatting was not applied to the variable.

2) I have 2 variables that are so ubiquitous that I'd like to convert them back to plain text. The terminology is unlikely to change in the future. Is there a way to find and replace those variables automatically?

There's no tool made specifically for that purpose, but the standard Find-And-Replace works just fine.
http://webhelp.madcapsoftware.com/flare ... eature.htm

[KLAstry]

How do I format a variable? For example, my content is: In the (variable)Blah(/variable) tab, click Bleh. I want Blah to always be bold.

[sfoley]

How do I format a variable? For example, my content is: In the (variable)Blah(/variable) tab, click Bleh. I want Blah to always be bold.

You need to wrap it in <b> or <span> elements, like any other piece of text. You can also add both the variable and its formatting to a snippet, and use the snippet instead.

[ebill]

I have variable names that I would like to be italicized when the variable is inserted. I have been unable to find a way to do that. Problem is that in the TOC the variable names are not Italicized, however, I can apply the attribute in the text. Opened the variables file in a text editor and tried some xml statements but these only appear in the variable name. Is there any way to apply a bold or italic in the variable editor?

Edward

[LTinker68]

If you always want the variable italicized, then put the variable in a snippet and wrap the variable in a span class that italicizes the text. Instead of inserting the variable in your topics, insert the snippet.